Setting up task queues in Comindware Tracker

Queues are often needed to serve as a starting point in a process, or rather as "buckets" new requests go to as soon as they come in. You may need to set up a queue to "own" your new requests before someone from your team picks them up from that queue. Here is how you can set up a queue in Comindware Tracker:

Method №1

Most often, a queue is simply an owner of all new requests. For example, all your new "Corporate Support" requests should go to one queue, "IT Helpdesk" to another and so on. As soon as relevant engineers pick the requests up from a queue, they simply change the owner from the queue to themselves. If this is the scenario you want to achieve, create an abstract user, which will represent the queue, and call it after the queue name (e.g. "IT Helpdesk"). Set your workflow up to assign a task at the first step of your workflow to this user. When a real user is ready to start working on the task he will need to just reassign it to himself.

Lists can used to ensure that all users can see all the requests in the queue as soon as they arrive. The screenshot below shows a sample task queue for IT department.

Note: abstract user (IT Helpdesk in example above) does not need a product license assigned to work as a queue.

Method №2

Another way to define a queue is to use a "multiple values" type field. In this case the queue will be an attribute of your requests throughout their lifecycle. Let's take a look at the following example. A company is supporting both corporate and individual customers. When new support requests come in, they are picked up by relevant engineers but you want to see which cases are from "corporate" queue and which are from the "individual" one even after they get picked up. To organize case management this way, pre-defined "multiple values" type fields can be used.

Create a field called "Customer type", check the "Multiple values" option in field settings and add 2 values to it - "Corporate" and "Individual". Whenever a new case arrives and someone picks it up, make it required to fill this field in before proceeding so your agents specify whether the case is from a "Corporate" or an "Individual" customer. After that, all you need to do is create a list with this field added to list's columns or filters. Managers and support professionals will then be able to use this list to monitor cases related to their corresponding areas of responsibility (queues).

The method you choose depends on what you define as a "queue" in your organization and what requirements you have for monitoring, management and assignment of requests to your users. The tho methods described in this article are the "best practices" commonly used by our clients but you can be creative and come up with your own, depending on your goals and requirements.